Bans issued for openly advertised Elo boosting

Bans issued for openly advertised Elo boosting

We recently announced the Season 2 ranked rewards, and since then we’ve seen occurrences of highly skilled players logging into the accounts of other players and dominating games in order to qualify that account for additional rewards. Some streamers have even been openly advertising these services and engaging in this in front of thousands of viewers. This is unacceptable. We strongly believe that ranked rewards should be fairly earned by the recipients.

Not only is account sharing against the Terms of Use, and not only does it undermine the spirit of fair play, but it also affects many innocent players who find themselves battling a player whose true Elo is 1000 or more points above theirs.

Today we’ve issued the following punishments:

- Two week suspensions for the accounts of a few streamers that we’ve confirmed were engaging in this behavior: robertxlee, Only Jaximus, yangfushang, and dye44.

- Seven day suspensions for the accounts that received Elo boosts from these players. These accounts have lost all eligibility for Season 2 rewards and have had their ranked Elo reset to an appropriate level.

We’re also in the midst of an analysis that will identify other players who have clearly participated in Elo boosting over the past several months. Once the list is finalized we’ll be taking similar action against those accounts.

The integrity of ranked play is extremely important to us, and to that end we will continue monitoring for these behaviors going forward. Permanent bans will be issued to players who are found engaging in Elo boosting in the future.

For the vast majority of players who have competed fairly throughout Season 2, you have nothing to worry about. There are twelve days left to earn rewards before the season end date of October 23. Good luck and have fun!